Most people I knew growing up are dead or dying

I was born in 1948 which makes me now 61 years old and I started thinking about "How many people that were alive when I was young are still alive?"

Almost everyone 20 years older than me at any time during my life are gone now. And I figure about 20% of the people my age are still alive worldwide. I suppose it could be as high as 50% but I think it is unlikely.

However, there is a statement often made about young people today which is: If you live to be 30 you likely will live to be 90.

However, this really was not true of people born in 1948. For example, more young men my age died in Viet Nam than any other single age. And literally everyone I knew who went and returned from the Viet Nam War did not come back a whole person. That is to say they were never the same person returning as who left. It was like all their youth and joy was sucked out of them permanently by seeing so much death and dying. So even if they were not physically wounded they were literally all walking wounded which means they had post traumatic stress disorder in one form or another.

I was lucky in that because I had had childhood epilepsy which by the way made me become intuitive Fred (whether I wanted to or not) God in his great wisdom prevented me from being drafted and ever going to Viet Nam. So though I felt very guilty about the fact that I did not go when hundreds of thousands of other young men were forced to through the draft I was still grateful to be alive and not dead or maimed or one of the many many walking wounded, many of which still wander homelessly our highways and byways even today 40 years or more later.

So, though today I feel very lucky to be alive and to have enough and to have healthy children, most already grown up, I have to remember all those fallen by war, accident or other tragedy in their lives.

For some reason God has blessed me and kept me alive to write these articles for you and to help and bless people in whatever ways I am capable.